This invention relates to medical devices and more particularly relates to blood sampling devices and safe disposal thereof.
Many medical articles used in hospitals and clinics are designed for one-time use. Articles which have sharp points, cutting edges and like, are collectively known as sharps, and many disclosures of special equipment and procedures have been proposed to minimize the danger of injury, such as needle stick, to personnel involved in the use of these articles. Safe handling and disposal is particularly important, since a sharp is often used in a procedure, such as blood sampling, and as a result may be contaminated with a potentially infectious agent.
Many designs of disposal equipment for sharps have been proposed. Most include a storage container having a lid with locking closure features and several openings through the lid for access to the interior of the container. Often the sharp is affixed to a hub having threads mated to a tube holder, and it is conventional that one of the openings have structure associated therewith, known as the unwinder, for unthreading the sharp from the holder without any manual manipulation by the user.
Conventional unwinders operate by inserting a needle-hub unit into the large end of a V-shaped opening and advancing the unit toward the narrow end of the opening until ribs on the hub engage the wall of the unwinder. At this point, a twisting rotation of the needle holder causes the hub and needle drop off into the container. Typical sharps disposal containers having an unwinder designed to unthread needles from a hub are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,375,849 to Hanifl, U.S. Pat. No. 5,415,315 to Ramiriz et al, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,466,538 to Gianni. An unwinder for double-ended needles is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,092,462 to Sagstetter et al.
Reports from field use of prior art sharps disposal equipment have repeatedly pointed to difficulties encountered in engaging the ribs of a needle-hub unit with the unwinder. With prior art assemblies, the practictioner has only visual guidance and trial and error for positioning the unit, otherwise the ribs are askew relative to the unwinder and engagement cannot occur. This deficiency may lead to accidents, such as tipping of the assembly and inadvertent needle stick of technician or subject. There is a need in the art for sharps disposal equipment which overcomes this prior art deficiency. The present invention addresses this need.
A sharps disposal assembly has a container and a cap therefor. A plate section of the cap defines a recessed unwinder opening therethrough. A first vertical wall depends downwardly from the plate and circumscribes a recessed platform portion of the unwinder for receiving the bottom wall of a tube holder. A second vertical wall portion depends downwardly from the platform, has a width which is congruent with the width of the nose portion of the tube holder and circumscribes a horizontal shelf portion of the unwinder. A third vertical wall portion of the unwinder depends downwardly from the shelf and may optionally include one or more vertical shoulders projecting therefrom to engage a rib on a needle hub to be unwound.
Thus, when a needle hub unit is to be unwound for disposal, the bottom wall of the tube holder is easily positioned properly by visual and tactile recognition of the recessed platform. The congruity of the length of the nose portion of the holder and the width of the first vertical wall portion assures perfect vertical alignment of the needle-hub unit so that easy, error-free advancement and engagement with the unwinder can be carried out, with no trial and error, using tactile guidance only.
Thus, all the guesswork and trial and error for proper positioning inherent in use of prior art assemblies is eliminated with the assembly of the invention.